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Ellen Pompeo

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Biography

Ellen Pompeo (born November 10, 1969) is a Golden Globe nominated and Screen Actors Guild award winning American actress, best known for playing the title role of Meredith Grey on the ABC medical drama Grey's Anatomy.

Pompeo was born in Everett, Massachusetts. She is Irish on her mother's side of the family and Italian on her father's, Pompeo is a Catholic. Her grandfather was born in Gesualdo, a village in Province of Avellino, Italy. Her mother, Kathleen passed away when she was four years old, her father remarried soon after her mother's death. At school she was nicknamed 'The Pencil' for her slim frame.

Determined to succeed in acting, Pompeo moved to Los Angeles in 2001. A turning point came when she was selected by director Brad Silberling in 2002 for a role in his film Moonlight Mile playing Jake Gyllenhaal's sympathetic love interest. She also appeared in the film Daredevil playing Matt Murdock's (Ben Affleck) secretary Karen Page, but most of her scenes were deleted from the theatrical version of the film. In 2002 and 2003, Pompeo appeared in Catch Me If You Can and Old School. Television guest roles include two episodes of Law & Order and an episode of Friends. She portrayed Jim Carrey's ex-girlfriend, Naomi, in the 2004 film Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Although her scenes were cut from the film, she felt grateful that director Michel Gondry chose her to appear in his film.

Pompeo landed her first major role in the ABC medical drama Grey's Anatomy, as the title character, Meredith Grey, a surgical intern at a prestigious hospital. The show became the highest-rated show on network TV in its third season. In 2007, Pompeo was nominated for a Golden Globe for Best Actress in a Drama Series. That year, she also signed a new contract for Grey's Anatomy that increased her salary to nearly $200,000 per episode.

She is currently engaged to music producer Christopher Ivery, and they reside in Los Angeles. They met in 2003 when mutual friends introduced them at a Whole Foods Market, but only began dating six months later. They later discovered that they grew up in Boston ten miles from each other. Pompeo and Ivery expect their wedding to be an intimate ceromony, with just the both of them present. Ellen made a short video for actober.com as a Boston Red Sox fan, in the video she plays Dr. Meredith Grey, who patches up Curt Shillings bleeding ankle. During the summer Ellen appeared on British talk show Richard and Judy, on this she talked about losing her mother at such a young age. She states that one day watching the television she saw Madonna on, talking about losing her mother too at such a yound age and this made Ellen relize it's okay to talk about the loss of her mother. Growing up Ellen looked up to Madonna.